You wouldn’t know it if you were watching these recent Heat playoff games on TV. TV doesn’t bother much with pregame warmups. You might not even have noticed if you were in the arena. Who pays attention to what goes on before a game?

You wouldn’t know it if you were watching these recent Heat playoff games on TV. TV doesn’t bother much with pregame warmups. You might not even have noticed if you were in the arena. Who pays attention to what goes on before a game?

LeBron James is in seclusion.

Maybe the most famous, talked-about, spot-lit athlete in America will take his me-time whenever he can get it.

James doesn’t come out lately as the arena and the noise are ramping up. He isn’t on the court taking practice shots. Is nowhere to be seen as the national anthem plays. Isn’t even present for pregame introductions.

He is alone in his zone, quietly slipping out just before the opening tipoff.

To a lesser extent, fellow superstar Dwyane Wade has been doing the same thing, eschewing his regular pregame warmup routine (though not the anthem or introductions).

Hey, whatever works, guys.

Based on their performance lately, the new method of operation is working.

Miami’s two superstars appear to be saving their best shots for the games rather than wasting them in warmups.

Wade added 22 with seven assists, their combined 54 points making you wonder what was wrong — so good have they been lately as a tandem.

James and Wade had combined for a surreal 197 points in the three previous games that buried the Indiana Pacers and advanced Miami to this stage.

“They don’t have to score 70 [between them] for us to have a chance to win, but they have to shoulder a big load,” said coach Erik Spoelstra, alluding to the continued absence of third scoring option Chris Bosh. Because of an injury.

“That is the new norm for us. They are up to the challenge.”

They certainly were in closing out the last series, and they were again in starting this one right.

James, especially, asserted himself, reminding any doubters why he was this season’s league MVP.

(People who still doubt LeBron surely are as rare now as members of the Flat Earth Society, and increasingly seen with the same incredulity.)

“He’s a maestro,” Spoelstra said of James.

The Heat coach also happens to have referred to Celtics guard Rajon Rondo, before the game, as a “maestro,” evidently Spoelstra’s word du jour. Nevertheless! James was the maestro holding the baton Monday, and directing the music that sounded a lot like 20,000 fans making happy noise.

These Eastern finals are supposed to be about past vs. present, nostalgia vs. now.